Sunday, April 27, 2008
Today is Sunday, April 27, the 118th day of 2008. There are 248 days left in the year. On this date in 1805, during the First Barbary War, an American-led force of Marines and mercenaries captures the city of Derna, on the shores of Tripoli.
In 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan is killed by natives in the Philippines. In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I. In 1822, the 18th president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, is born in Point Pleasant, Ohio. In 1865, the steamer Sultana explodes on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tenn., killing more than 1,400 people, mostly freed Union prisoners of war. In 1965, broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow dies in Pawling, N.Y., two days after turning 57. In 1973, acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray resigns after it is revealed that he had handed over bureau files on the Watergate burglary to the Nixon White House. In 1978, 51 construction workers plunge to their deaths when a scaffold inside a cooling tower at the Pleasants Power Station site in West Virginia falls 168 feet to the ground.
April 27, 1983: The parents of two sorority members killed when a ferryboat and a 17-foot speedboat collided on Conneaut Lake in 1982 file suit in Crawford County against the owners of both vessels.
The Youngstown Leadership Conference recommends legislation that would establish two assistant police chiefs in the city. It names two candidates for the jobs, one of who is a Negro.
City council turns down a request by Mayor George Vukovich to allocate $30,000 to buy a vacant building on East Boardman Street next to police headquarters, contending the money could be better spent to rehabilitate the Oak Street Bridge.
April 27, 1968: James Scott Gregg, 61, Salem correspondent for The Vindicator for 40 years, dies in Salem City Hospital after being struck with a heart attack at his home.
Camp Fire Girls of the Ki-Yo-Kwa District plant two pine trees in Fellows Riverside Gardens in Mill Creek Park as part of the statewide Arbor Day observance.
April 27, 1958: Residents of Youngstown and 81 other Ohio communities go on Daylight Savings Time. Most of the communities will return to Eastern Standard Time Sept. 28, but some will extend it to Oct. 26.
A 36-year-old Youngstown man spared a life sentence 10 years earlier because his burglary victims thought the penalty too severe for a war veteran has been charged with robbery and rape in Cleveland and Mercer County.
Michael Kaiser, editor of the Youngstown University student newspaper, The Jambar, is elected president of the Ohio College Newspaper Association. The Jambar was named best newspaper in the Penn-Ohio College Press Association.
April 27, 1933: The Federation of Improvement Clubs in Campbell goes on record as favoring an Ohio bill that would give the state auditor the authority to appoint an administrator to oversee the affairs of a city that has defaulted on its obligations.
Testimony in a lawsuit filed by a woman denied entrance to the Veterans of Foreign Wars “walkathon” at the Rayen-Wood Auditorium, indicates that the VFW Post 93 may have taken in as much as $26,000 during more than 50 days of operation.
The 78 “permanent” residents of a Hoover city along the B&O Railroad tracks near the city incinerator ask to be left alone in the tumbledown shacks they have built. City Building Commissioner Eugene Crow has begun a census of the population of the village with an idea of eliminating it.